


Vignettes

by TaleWorthTelling



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 16:52:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10768443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaleWorthTelling/pseuds/TaleWorthTelling
Summary: Bits and pieces of character and relationship studies that I decided to put in one place.Ch. 1: Bucky and Sam.Ch. 2: SteveCh. 3: Sam/Steve (unresolved)Ch. 4: Wanda





	1. Pancakes: Bucky and Sam

**Author's Note:**

> So after cleaning out some folders, I've found some beginnings that I like enough to share but don't remember well enough to incorporate anything new. I figure they can find a home as a short and sweet slice of life series.

"I guess I just assumed that you'd be punctual."

Sam Wilson glared down at him from beneath the soggy brim of his cap. "No one's perfect, Barnes."

Bucky snorted, signaling to the waitress and mouthing a thank you at her. He was practically melted into the booth at this point, leaning into the wall, arm stretched up across the back, with a nice, comfortable soft spot in the padding conforming perfectly to the shape of his ass in a gentle vinyl embrace. It was thoughts like this that reminded him of why he'd been drawn to Steve in the first place: Bucky may have looked normal on the surface, but normal he was not. And with Steve came the ever-growing collection of people caught up in his sway. People like Sam. But Bucky was the first.

"If Steve catches you wearing that thing," he said, shifting out of his position to put his feet on the floor and sit up, "he might start looking for a new partner."

Sam wrinkled his nose, pulling the Yankees cap from his head and tossing it into the windowsill to drip in peace. "It was a gift. I'm polite." He sat down opposite Bucky and rolled his shoulders out of his jacket. "How many cups in are you?"

"You don't want to know," he replied with a grin as Tammy the waitress working on her engineering degree brought over a fresh pot of hot coffee and another cup for Sam. He looked up and smiled at her. "Thanks."

"No problem," she said, face tipped down but shoulders relaxed. She was shy, but she liked him. It was nice to know that he still had it in him. 

"Thank you," Sam said, turning on the charm like a switch had been flipped, going from the damp, grumpy mess that had slumped in through the door to the electric powerhouse of personality that Bucky had seen cut right through a sour mood in about ten seconds. When he felt like it, at any rate.

It was not, especially, a charm that he turned on for Bucky. Bucky didn't mind. He liked being privy to the nuts and bolts and framework that not everyone else got to see. It felt real, a quality that he appreciated more and more these days. 

Tammy smiled at Sam like she couldn't help it while she took his order and he thanked her again.

Bucky snorted. "Waffles?" 

"Yeah, waffles." Sam dropped the charm but also his shoulders, relaxing and making himself comfortable. He glanced skeptically at the half-empty plate of pancakes and syrup in front of Bucky. "Ain't like we didn't already know we disagreed on a few things."

"Yeah, but _breakfast_?"

Sam shrugged. "I can grudgingly admit that we agree where it counts, but I will never, ever be a pancake man, Barnes. Just not happening. You're on your own there."

"Steve likes pancakes."

"Steve likes whatever he can stuff in his super-soldier face when he realizes he's hungry. He'll eat whatever's on his plate, your plate, my plate, grab something else nearby, doesn't matter. Man can eat."

"Yeah, but he'd start with pancakes."


	2. Decommissioned: Steve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve reflects post-CW.

Possibly the single most important and most misunderstood thing about Captain Steve Rogers was this: he was not Captain America in his head. He could take or leave the name, the trappings, even the symbol of it. The function of that identity was always to represent the ideals already emblazoned on his soul. When people saw the suit, the mask, his experience was the feel of it on his skin, the smell of the tough synthetics in his nose, the flex of the fabric and sturdiness of the armor. It was fitting, in a way; he was used to being on the opposite side of, well, most everything. 

Giving all of that up took only a moment of consideration, and then it was done. He wasn’t Captain America anymore. Let them have it. It had done its duty. It was decommissioned, like old equipment. 

He didn’t even miss the shield. Honestly, Sam was more broken up about it than he was. He’d never been a very sentimental guy, really more utilitarian and pragmatic. He loved the versatility of it, how natural it felt in his hands, how above all he could protect with it, but no one more than he remembered how much violence and pain had been enacted with it. It was a tool and a weapon, not an extension of his being as seemed to be the misconception.

He’d caught Sam furtively flipping through some Captain America comics once, and when he’d smiled and laughed it off and said it was okay, Sam had relaxed and shared with him his personal childhood favorite issues. He couldn’t help but notice how helpless his comic counterpart seemed sometimes when the shield was separated from him -- “Depends on the writer, man,” Sam insisted – and how many iterations there had been from bystanders of the sentiment, “Oh no, whatever shall he do without it!” At the time, he’d huffed a laugh through his nose and then switched his attention to the next thing Sam wanted to show him. 

Sam had the right idea; he’d been doing his part every way he could before Steve had dragged him into this fantastically bizarre superhero gig. It wasn’t like it was melee or bust. There would always be people in need, always be ways he could help. There would always be ways only he could help. He didn’t for a second believe that slipping off the mask for good changed anything. 

Not for the first time, Sam was muttering his grievances. “You could’ve kept the shield at least.” He closed his eyes, tilting his face into the earthy Wakandan breeze pouring in from the window. “No one said you had to wear the suit.”

Also not for the first time, Steve reflected on how much power that shield held in the minds of the generations that had been raised on its myth. Like a beacon of hope. 

“Like they said,” he repeated, “it didn’t belong to me.”

“Bullshit,” Sam muttered without heat. “It’s yours, and they know it.”

“You think I need it to get anything done?”

Sam snorted. “Course not. Ain’t the point. That was a power move.”

It had been. Steve could concede that one. But not in the way that Sam thought.


	3. Kinesiology: Sam/Steve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam liked Steve from the beginning, but the quiet moments are how he really got to know him. (Also, Sam realizes he's painfully attracted to him.)

Steve drags a triangle of toast through a puddle of fake maple syrup while he pages through a file stolen from a decommissioned secret lab. The studious look of concentration on his face is at odds with the absent way he sucks syrup from the side of his hand where it’s dripped, eyes never straying from the musty paper. 

Sam smiles watching it, having found this guy more endearing with each passing day for all sorts of surprising reasons. He can’t help it. He has respect up to his ears for Cap, faith and loyalty in spades, but, come on, the man doodles on napkins when he’s tired. The first time he had seen Steve dig from his pocket a pencil so small that it nearly disappeared in his enormous hand, drag over a napkin, and start scribbling, he’d assumed that his incredible, indefatigable tactical brain was making suggestions, critiquing, and drawing up plans at such speed that none of it could wait. It was really something, watching his mind at work. The man was just as brilliant as the books had said, maybe even more so up close. Steve didn’t care much who got the credit for what he did, so long as what mattered got done, and so some of his skills went overlooked.

He’d finally slid his ice water to the side to get a look, curious. And promptly snorted. Steve had been drawing a cartoon, very rough but clearly of Captain America, and in it he was slipping on a banana peel and about to land on his ass. A pair of eyes peeked from around the corner.

Look, Sam’s not a therapist, never claimed to be, so instead of pondering at the implications, he laughed, shocked and delighted by this bizarre little moment. 

Steve barely glanced up. He was practically falling into his sandwich, but instead of, you know, eating it, he just kept dragging his hand across the napkin. He coughed and shifted in his seat, but he never lifted his head from where he was resting it in his other palm, elbow on the table. Eventually he sighed, glanced at his plate, and ate as mechanically and quickly as possible, perking up just a little. They’d paid, left, and found someplace to crash not long after that.

Today, though, Steve is alert, back straight and eyes clear. He’s hungrily devouring information, modestly consuming his breakfast, and still manages to notice every person who walks into the place and keep track of their movements. It’s not something he’s doing consciously, even; it’s situational awareness like Sam’s, only turned up to eleven. He can’t seem to help it. A single glance over his shoulder nets him more useful information than Sam could glean in three, and he actually remembers it all. 

As a kid, and even at the beginning of his service days, Sam would have marveled at that kind of ability, but now it just seems exhausting. 

“You know you can just get more pancakes, right?” he asks. 

“Did you want the rest of the toast?” Steve’s response is distracted, but light.

Sam shakes his head. 

Despite still not looking up, Steve catches it anyway. “Then I might as well finish it.”  
*

Three weeks into the reconnaissance road trip he’d undertaken with his new best friend, halfway through a flimsy bottle of water that crackles in his palm as he drains it like it’s going out of style, Sam remembers a teenage argument he’d once had about whether or not Captain America masturbated. It’s an odd thought, an even odder time to be thinking it, but it startles a laugh out of him that quickly has him coughing and sputtering water.

The man in question looks up from the bathroom where he’s hunched over the sink to wash his face. “You okay?”

“Went down the wrong way,” Sam rasps. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, slow with contemplation. Three weeks he’s been sleeping near the guy, and he realizes it’s never come up. 

Steve’s preoccupied, of course, but Sam’s always found that a little self-love clears his head, makes him more useful. He’s already just narrowly missed being caught twice, and the third time Steve had considerately turned around, left, and closed the door without a word. So it’s not like it’s out of left field. He’s all strength and grace and economy of motion, all potential energy. Surely a kinetic powerhouse like that has to work off some of it now and then. 

That’s about the time Sam realizes he’s totally fried, carefully finishes his water, and puts himself to bed. He’s out the moment his head touches the pillow.

*

It’s not like Sam makes a habit of speculating about the personal, private business of his friends. He doesn’t. That’s definitely not cool. It’s just … he’d been the one vehemently insisting that of course Captain America jerked off, all the while his friends couldn’t wrap their heads around the idea. In retrospect, it was a truly ridiculous argument, brought on by an even more absurd conversation, but in fairness, at the time, Steve had been dead. Well, assumed dead. Actual books have been published that speculate on the love life of Captain America, so it’s not like he’s the first person to ever have a prurient thought about an important historical figure. It’s just that, well, now that he’s met the guy, he feels sort of guilty about it, sort of cheap. 

He’s not just an important historical figure. He’s a person. A guy, you know, with thoughts, and feelings, and a right to privacy and all that.

All of which makes Sam feel very, very guilty about the dream he has the next night. Three guesses, and the first two don’t count.


	4. The Kitchen: Wanda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wanda hones her powers and gets to know the new people in her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously this is between AoU and CW. I have a lot of feelings about the twins.

Wanda did not grow up believing in magic. That was for her elders, for the addled, for the desperate. Wanda grew up believing in Pietro.

 

Wanda had learned in a way much harder than many that growing up meant learning that you were not always right. In fact, you rarely were, and the harder you clutched your truths, the sharper they became, and the deeper they would cut you for your foolishness.

 

Magic was what she was. It flowed through her veins, stirred her thoughts, lived in her soul. She felt it within her, and without; it was in the air she breathed, weak signals floated on a breeze, dizzying energy flooding like ozone after a storm. It was the tang of smoke after the fire's been extinguished, clinging to everything it touched, tasted in the back of the throat.

 

And if she was now made of magic, then what could she not hope to accomplish with it? She had believed in Pietro, and Pietro had told her to believe in herself.

 

Look what that had cost him.

 

The first thing that Wanda learned in America was that for the willing, anything could be found.

 

And so she began to learn.

 

 

 

She had her own room in this new place. Many times she turned to tell Pietro her latest findings about the level of privacy she now enjoyed, how strange and wonderful and sometimes lonely it was. Many times she turned and felt the air empty beside her.

 

Many was the hairline crack that formed in the window as she realized her mistake, energy crackling. Eventually it was noticed and replaced.

 

Things like windows always could be.

 

She spent a lot of her free time in the kitchen, both because she could not believe how plentiful the food was and how she was allowed whatever she liked, and she still did not trust the certainty of this fact; and also because she stubbornly refused to allow that old fear to control her, the one that told her to grab what she needed and run far away before she was caught. She would not be caught. She had done nothing wrong. So against her instincts, she stayed close to this bounty, and allowed herself to loosen her muscles and un-clench her fists and forget the anticipation of discovery and chase and punishment.

 

Trust was a difficult pill to swallow, a difficult remedy to accept.

 

But Pietro would not want her to hide. Not forever. And Pietro would have greatly enjoyed what this place had to offer. Even before the experiments, he had eaten like a horse -- or he would have had he not often and secretly given his share to her, claiming not to be hungry. Sometimes Wanda wished she would have argued more, demanded just one more time that he eat, and not let him do this for her. But the kindness sated him more than any bread would have, and she knew it, and so this, too, was to be swallowed and accepted and lived with.

 

The Avengers were all possessed of large appetites, especially on days of hard training, and as such were frequently in and out of the kitchen. They often passed by her and nodded in acknowledgement. They were not yet a team, though this was what they were one day supposed to be. They were a preoccupied bunch, grabbing something and back on the go again. It was the one with the wings, Sam Wilson, who first sat down beside her, he with a bowl of cereal and her toying with an apple that she'd been pulverizing internally with subtle hexes, trying not to bruise the skin or change its shape too noticeably. She was getting more adept.

 

"So you're, what, nineteen, twenty?" he asked, carefully dunking his Cheerios below the level of the milk to evenly coat them. The spoon clinked gently on the bowl.

 

"Almost twenty," she responded evenly. The left side was beginning to slump inward toward the stem.

 

"So nineteen."

 

"This is young to you?" There was a lilt in her voice that had intrigued many a man. She had not tested this since leaving Sokovia, but it had rarely failed her, to Pietro's eternal consternation and fear.

 

It had no effect on him, except to produce what she thought was a sad smile that made her mad and uncomfortable before she tamped it down.

 

"It's the kind of young that feels old, until you're on the other side of it. But I guess you'd know that better than a lot of people. Tough breaks."

 

That he did not skirt around her past or her misfortunes, euphemistically wipe them away, surprised her. She turned to face him. He was handsome, calm of spirit and mind, very little magic clinging to his skin. His mind was a fortress built tall but forever unlocked.

 

She did not enter.

 

"And you? It is my understanding that we are all, the lot of us, broken toys and lost soldiers, mismatched and desperate for purpose. What melted your wings, Icarus, and plummeted you back to where the rest of us live?"

 

He happily ate a couple of spoonfuls of cereal before he answered. "I was in the Air Force. Flew up high, got in fast, flew out faster. It ended badly. I lost someone. Lot of someones, but. One of 'em special."

 

Something flickered across him, a momentary break in his shields, temporary vulnerability where the magic found ground and seeped in like water. Wanda pushed it away. The apple flattened slightly, bulging at the sides.

 

"Tough break," she said. She arranged the seeds side by side, watching them shift into place under the skin.

 

He laughed. "We all got 'em." A pause. "That's just not right."

 

When she looked up his gaze was on the apple, and he was not wrong, she supposed. But it was what it was. A tear finally formed in the skin and the liquefied flesh oozed out, a slow trickle into a puddle of mush.

 

"You been practicing that?"

 

"Yes. The apple no longer explodes."

 

"That sounds like something to celebrate," he said, and his sincerity was like a strange magic all its own.

 

She smiled. "How would you celebrate?"

 

"At your age? If I was home, by getting really drunk, accidentally breaking something, and then getting yelled at by at least two aunts. That last part isn't the celebration, but I don't have much of a history of getting away with dumb shit. Not with my family. Well, until I signed up with Cap, anyway. Now I've got an all-access pass to the Bad Idea Emporium."

 

"Yet you follow him." This had puzzled her for some time, but she had not found a voice for her thoughts. Symbols, larger than life icons, these were not things that one could follow. These were ultimately not real. But the man to whom she had tentatively sworn allegiance, Captain America (who she had met) ... Steve Rogers (who she had, in passing, glanced) ... he had inspired many, and she had not yet discovered his trick.

 

"Of course. It wouldn't be so damn infuriating if he didn't turn out to be right most of the time." He glanced up at the clock on the wall. "I'm free basically 'til the next disaster. Want to catch a movie? It's rough being cooped up here all the time. Was thinking 'bout stretching my legs before Steve tries to run 'em off again."

 

Wanda thought about the book under her mattress that she'd spent the last week reading and practicing from. She looked over the remains of the apple.

 

Too much magic for one day had made her nerves jittery, anyway. Better to wait.

 

She stood up and reached for a towel to clean up the table. "It will probably be nothing but action movies."

 

"That would just be unfair. I'm living in an action movie. Can't a guy just sit back, relax, and take in a romantic comedy?"

 

She smiled, a small, speculative thing. She turned off the light on the way out of the kitchen.

 

 

 

Wanda had not spent significant time in her life in the company of other women. She had often thought that this was regrettable. Did it count, then, these women who were not friends, not equals, but superiors, watching her every day? She supposed it would have to.

 

Commander Hill did not live on premises, but every morning she was there she headed to the kitchen for a cup of strong coffee tinted paler with milk and a bowl of oatmeal so thin that she could drink it one handed and use the other to page through reports instead of for the inconvenience of holding a spoon.

 

Wanda wondered whether she even bothered to keep food in the apartment where she supposedly resided or if she spent so much time working that it was pointless. Wanda suspected, though she would not have said aloud, that the woman simply liked eating where there were people around. A weakness, but an understandable one. Wanda did not like to eat alone either.

 

"Moved on to the root vegetables, I see," Commander Hill remarked, not lifting her eyes from her tablet. She swiped at the screen with her thumb and lifted her coffee to her lips and still she appeared neither distracted nor absent. It was a skill that Wanda thought useful, but difficult. She tended to stare straight ahead, focus clear and obvious.

 

The potato in front of her, floating in the air for examination, was grossly misshapen; she had separated the water from the solids. It felt unnatural to do so, a tingle-spark in her hands and at the base of her spine, but to know a thing you must dismantle it and control its parts. Often, in the human mind, those parts worked against each other, at cross-purposes. Metaphorically, spiritually, this was significant.

 

But it would be foolish and untrue to suggest that she did not imagine doing this to the cells of a very human enemy in battle. That she did not imagine their agony, whether they would even feel a thing or whether they would simply perish. At times she hoped that it was painless; other times, she hoped that it was unendurable.

 

She did not like herself when she wished to be able to inflict that kind of pain, that bitter deathblow. But she didn't deny it, either. Not to herself, anyway.

 

"They are more fibrous," Wanda responded, looking up as she always did to speak. "They become more complicated."

 

"How complicated would pureeing a human brain in its skull be?"

 

The potato fell to the counter and spat cloudy starch water in several directions.

 

Wanda was startled, but not startled enough not to muse that one day she would pull the starch from the water and it would emerge clear, not cloudy.

 

She shook her head. "I would not know this," she said warily.

 

"I could get an analyst on it, get you an answer."

 

Wanda had no idea how to respond. She opened her mouth, but there were no words at first, until, feebly, they spilled. "I am trying to fine tune my control over my powers. This necessitates experimentation and creativity. I don't know what you are talking about."

 

The sound of the ever-present tablet being placed on the table was loud and damning as a cell door closing. Commander Hill looked up and met her eyes fully. "Understand, many people have considered how to weaponize your talents. How to direct them, potentiate them. If you can stir someone's brain into a creamy goo that'll slide out of their nose, then someone will want you to do just that." She paused. "Is that what you want to do?"

 

"No," she said. "I do not want to do that." She lifted her chin. "But I need to know if I can."

 

She stared very hard at Wanda for a moment, then nodded and picked up her tablet again. "I think there's rutabagas in one of the crisper drawers. If you can dry those out better than my mother's cooking, we'll go out for coffee."


End file.
